Violence against Women: Some Considerations Regarding its Causes and its Elimination

Abstract

Violence against women is identified as an outcome of the social structure and ideology of gender domination. Its very definition is problematic and political, related to changes in women's place in male-dominated society. Specific crimes against women, such as the outlawing of birth control and abortion, rape, witch hunting, and wife battering, are grouped and analyzed as originating in female subordination in the gender-specific arenas of reproduction, sexuality, and nurturance. Despite recent formal legal gains by women, their increasing participation in the waged labor force, decreased childbearing, and a male-oriented "sexual revolution," neither individual nor systemic violence against women has apparently slackened. This is related to the fact that as traditional patriarchy is absorbed by the rule of the state, public institutions, and medicine over "personal" life, male domination is transformed rather than eroded. A qualitatively different development is the achievement of the feminist movement in exposing, defining, and challenging abuses of women. It is suggested that feminist strategies to use the criminal justice process to achieve liberation, as evidenced by legal reform movements with regard to pornography and family violence, should take into account the limitations of a structure whose predominant determinants are the protection of eco nomic order and ideological legitimacy.